The Globemaker

Peter Bellerby makes globes. He made his first globe as a gift for his father's 80th birthday; he simply couldn't find what he wanted, so he made it. After that first globe was such a hit, he set up an artisanal globemaking company, though it wasn't easy. In the short documentary below, we hear Bellerby's story and see the inside of his shop, where it appears much of the globemaking these days is done by assistants (pictured above).

A sample quote: "Ultimately it came down to working out how to put strips of paper onto a sphere. That took a year and a half for me to perfect. By that stage, we'd probably thrown away a hundred globes." Enjoy:

So firstly I had to license a map. From a reputable source. It had incorrect capitals, most of the names in the Middle East were either rubbish or incorrectly spelled or positioned. Don't let me start on the Aral Sea. That took at least 6 hours a day for about a year. In the end we changed everything. At the start I had to learn Adobe Illustrator, which is not so difficult. It's about as intuitive as the interweb and the email web are to my parents.

Also on Mental Floss:

DID YOU KNOW? Marlon Brando hated memorizing lines so much that he posted cue cards everywhere to help him get through scenes.
He even asked for lines to be written on an actress's posterior. (That request was denied.)